


This Is All Yours

by thestarsjustblinkforus



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 17:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3455849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsjustblinkforus/pseuds/thestarsjustblinkforus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an Album Series set in <a href="http://miserypornverse.tumblr.com/">Miserypornverse</a> to Alt-J’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCbt_x5K7c8&list=PLIh3DToXLv3wGsUe6NhvBcdTZG3pvqEkz">This is All Yours</a> about a Modern AU Irma Boissy. You don’t have to be following MPV for any of these to make sense - any relevant information will be included in a chapter note, but in this particular AU, Irma is from Boca Raton, FL, doesn’t move to NYC until college (although she meets and becomes best friends with Floréal in high school), and she has a brother named Tony who is about ten years older than she is who died of a heroin overdose when she was 13.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intro

**Author's Note:**

> The ‘purple octopus cd’ is Veruca Salt’s [Eight Arms To Hold You](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcki_-Qy-xDhPvT5dZhcoitVFkAtQv17g) and the song Irma hums from it is ["Awesome"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRsPzcAlScg&index=4&list=PLcki_-Qy-xDhPvT5dZhcoitVFkAtQv17g)
> 
> Tony is listening to a Lou Reed/Velvet Underground mix he made and the song he’s singing along to is ["Walk On The Wild Side"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KaWSOlASWc) off of [Transformer](https://vimeo.com/62005719)

\- - -

_summer, 1999, somewhere between boca raton and orlando, fl_

\- - -

she likes the car trips

she likes sitting in the backseat and having the whoooole thing to herself. she likes laying down and pretending her body is the perfect length to fit if she stretches ballerina-toes to fingertips but it’s not really and she has a looooot of roooooom so she pounds her heels on the seat to the music and she holds up her hands to the light pouring in through the windows, the leaves from the trees throwing moving patterns over her hands and it looks like lace, like she is lace skinned.

she thinks of the christening dress she found in the closet, how it looked with her hand underneath the skirt part, sunburn-pink and white instead of these shadows but still like this a bit, a bit like this and she thinks the stitches holding the dress together look like these veins she has on her wrists and that  _they_  look like the roads on one of the crumpled maps on the floor, so then the stitches are like roads too, and she imagines following one with her finger, the one at the bottom of the skirt that was left unfinished, that was straight and perfect but now is jagged and crooked because she is not as good at it as  _mommy mommy mommy mother mooooom mooooom mooooom_

this morning she took the tissue paper package down from the top shelf, legs wobbling on the wobbly chair as she  _reeeeaaaached_  and she took it into the living room and she sat on the scratchy carpet and she opened it again and she looked at the dress’s new stitches that she’d made with the needle left behind, the long long thread, and they looked very bad and very ugly but she liked them anyway, ziggy zaggy like shark teeth, and she picked at a loose stitch and  _puuuuulled_  watching it slowly bunch like an accordion as tony called from the hall,  _time to go_. she hid it in her suitcase to play with later tonight, to play with when grandma and grandpa go to bed and tony goes out and  _she_  is supposed to be  _sleeping_  but you don’t get to  _decide_ that tony that just  _happens_  like magic or a light switch and until it does stitch stitch stitch instead, sloppier and sloppier, tireder and tireder, more sharky teeth like the ones she made last night and she remembers suddenly the panic of the front door unlocking and trying to hide the dress but realizing she’d sewn it onto her shorts and she had snip-snipped and put a hole in them but it was only tony coming home very late,  _grown up late_ , and he gave her a bandaid because she had hurt herself, she was bleeding, she had been bitten by the little scissors that looked like a crane 

and the bandaid was a plain old bandaid and not one of the ones with cartoon characters which is  _booooring_  but dad picked them out and tony had said as he stuck it on,  _don’t let him see you playing with…_

and his eyes went to the christening dress but he said ‘ _scissors_ ’ instead and she knew and she said  _i know tony…_

_go to bed, bugsy_

_ok_

and she tucked the dress up in the crinkly paper and she dragged the chair over to the closet and she put it back on the top shelf but now it’s in her suitcase in the trunk and tony won’t tell on her, he won’t tell

tony is singing along to the song that’s playing and she thinks,  _i like it when you sing_. she likes it when he has his headphones on and sings and she can’t hear the music at all just his voice and the cd skips as they drive over something and she pops up like a jack in the box to look out the back and make sure it wasn’t a deer a rabbit a dog a cat a bear oh no good it’s just a branch, a branch like an arm that they cracked in two, two arms to hold you… no,  ** _eight_** ,  _eight_ _arms to hold you_ , the purple cd with the queen octopus that tony handed to her and said,  _here, bugsy, hear_  and she hums  _‘_ _goodbye 25 you were a good year_ _’_  to herself and thinks, _s_ _omeday i will be 25, but tony first_  and she turns back around to face the front and says _tony can we play my purple cd please next please_ and he says  _after lou_  and she laughs and says _no, after **you**_  and he grins in the mirror and calls her a weirdo and dad says nothing with his eyes on the road driving driving driving and tony sings,  _‘_ _doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo’_

she says  _dad i have to pee_  and he says  _you have to go to the_ ** _bathroom_**  and she agrees  _yes that is where i have to pee_  but she doesn’t really have to go it was just the first thing she thought to say and he says  _next rest stop_  and tony turns around in his seat and says _if you were a dude you could pee in that water bottle_  and she shoves him and says  _ew_ and dad shakes his head and she wants to kick at his seat but says instead,  _dad when are you coming back for us_ , and tony growls  _neverrrrr_ like a pirate and his eyes narrow and he looks like a cat when he does that and she laughs but feels bad in her stomach and tony glances away from her to dad, a curl to his lip, until he finally answers, _when school starts_ , and then tony says after a minute, still staring at him,  _you know if you were on duty you’d have to give yourself a ticket for letting her ride without a seatbelt_ and she slinks back into the backseat as dad’s eyes flick to the mirror and he says,  ** _seatbelt. now._**

she looks at tony a little stung but tony’s eyes are still on dad, still like a cat, and she thinks of buttercup the one who lives next door hissing at her that one time and tony hissing back and she buckles after one-two-three tries and  _click_ and she looks out the window tugging at the belt with both hands and thinks,  _grandma and grandpa’s florida looks different from me and tony’s florida_  and she thinks about disney world and she doesn’t remind tony that she wanted to hear the purple octopus cd

because tony is singing loud now almost too loud now and she wants to put her hands over her ears and dad is quiet and it sounds like shouting and tony suddenly reaches back behind the seat and smacks her knee accidentally but  _hard_ , and his palm immediately closes over it like catching a bug and he squeezes a  _sorry_ but he doesn’t say that word. he lets go to dig one handed in his bag and pulls out a half empty box of cigarettes with a lighter sticking out of it and dad says _put those away_ and tony says  _no_  and lights one up and the cd starts back at the beginning and she twists in the belt to lay back down on the seat again tugging with both hands again and she watches the clouds that don’t seem to move at all outside the window and she can see the lace on her eyelids when she closes her eyes so she does and dad rolls down all of the windows all the way down still quiet like shouting and she thinks of the sharky teeth roads she will make in the christening dress that will stretch aaaaall the way around to meet where the other ones stopped and she hears krista washington say,  _mommy mommy mommy mother mooooom mooooom mooooom_  again like she did the other day at the park, singing it out like a song, and her skin stings beneath the bandaid where tony smacked and she takes her fingers and she presses down hard on it and her eyes go hot and she sings with tony loud as she can,  _‘_ _doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo’_


	2. Arrival In Nara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Floréal is playing Anita in _West Side Story_ and Irma is on costume crew...

\- - - 

_Fall, 2006, Boca Raton, FL_

_\- - -_

It’s not a big deal, it’s forest green vines and burnt sienna flowers stitched onto an orange sherbet bodice

She’d been wanting to do it anyway but Mrs. Sullivan had said the dress was fine as it was,  _it looks great Irma really you did a great job_

All she had done was fix the zipper and repair the tulle

She didn’t really  _make_  anything and she wanted to  _make_  something

For opening

It’s opening

People get flowers on opening

It’s a thing 

So she stole the dress from the girl’s dressing room after everyone left, she took it home with her, she stayed up all night stitching vines, stitching flowers

and she thought about the night before, about hanging at the pool with Marisol after rehearsal, after hours, smoking at the stars, drinking at the moon, and it felt like what  _friends_  do

 _Friends_  text at 1am,  _wanna float?_

and she got home at 4 and she cried silent and happy into her pillow smiling until her face hurt, still in her wet clothes, her hair smelling like chlorine and Lucky Strikes, her throat raw from drinking and smoking and talking and  _laughing_  and she hoped she didn’t say anything dumb she hoped she didn’t say anything weird

She woke up in the morning before her alarm went off, her sheets cold and damp and  _what if Marisol didn’t have a good time at all_ , what if she never asked her to hang out ever again, and then she thought,  _whatever, whatever whatever._ She took a shower,  _whatever whatever whatever._ She drank her coffee,  _whatever whatever whatever_. She drove to school in silence and she smoked her cigarettes in the parking lot before first period and then Marisol was suddenly there,  _I am sooooooo hungover, gimme?_  and she plucked it from between Irma’s lips, took a drag and then placed it back, tilted her head at her and opened her bag revealing two cokes and a flask and an apple.  _For tonight,_  she said.  _I’m bribing you_ _,_  she said.  _Meet me for the dinner break I am gonna die if I have to hang out with the drama nerds anymore._

And she could have cried all over again, but she’d shrugged and said,  _Yeah, Ok_ , as she slid off the hood of her car swinging her bag onto her shoulder and tossing away the cigarette with a practiced easy flick of her wrist,  _Cool_

Later they spiked the cokes with the Jack in Marisol’s flask and they smoked the last of Irma’s cigarettes and Marisol said  _E_ _at the goddamn apple ok you’re like a machine when you’re working on shit_  and Irma rolled her eyes,  _O_ _k, **mom**_ , butsmiled and took it when Marisol went back to rehearsal and it was the most  _perfect_ red and she held it up against the rejected costumes on the rack, admired it against a teal gas station button down that was too  _Grease_ , a plum and olive tweed jacket that was too  _My Fair Lady_ , Anita’s original marigold dress that had been too big and had been replaced with the sherbet taffeta that Irma liked better anyway because the skirt of it when Marisol twirled was like a frothy ice cream tornado…

But it needed _something_ … she wanted to give it  _something_

and Marisol likes flowers, she wears them all the time so

So she waited until everyone was leaving and then shoved it in her bag, reminding herself she’d been wanting to do more with it anyway, add something pretty, something special to it anyway and it was her last chance to do it

And sometimes she doesn’t sleep, sometimes she’d rather sew than try to, so it’s not a big deal, it’s just a handful of hours and sore fingers because she hates thimbles and forest green and burnt sienna looks surprisingly decent on orange sherbet and Irma really likes embroidery a lot anyway so it’s not a big deal anyway, it’s just flowers and vines

It’s whatever whatever whatever

She got to school early this morning, she hung it carefully back up on the hanger with the “Marisol/Anita” tag on it and she waited in the parking lot for first bell lying on the hood of her car again, smoking at the clouds again and wondering if it was really dumb what she did, if Marisol would think it was lame what she did, until someone kicked her tire and said,  _Look sharp, Boissy_  and Irma turned her head and tried not to grin because she hates her teeth and said,  _Not in these fuckin’ uniforms, Cordero…_ and Marisol snorted and rolled the waistband of her plaid skirt up another length

\- - - 

After final bell she heads down to the basement to check in with Mrs. Sullivan in case there’s anything left to do and there’s replacing a lost button on Tony’s dress shirt, a last minute fallen hem on Maria’s party dress, and she wants to find Marisol to say good luck before the show even though she doesn’t really need it because she’s fucking great, like  _Rita Moreno would be proud_  great, but also maybe doesn’t want to because she feels dumb and shy because she’s seen the dress by now, she’s wearing it by now because she  _has_  to, not because she likes it or anything. The other dress doesn’t fit.

What if she hates it, what if it’s ruined

What if it’s ugly now, what if she thinks it’s ugly now

She reinforces all the buttons on the dress shirt, she checks the other girls’ party dresses for loose hems and jacked zippers for the quick changes and 15 minutes to curtain she finally leaves the shop to take her seat in the auditorium

Marisol catches her in the hallway outside the dressing room, her hand shooting out from the door and pulling her inside and she  _looks_  at her, her hands running lightly up and down the bodice, her fingers reading the new stitches like braille and Irma’s face goes hot when she doesn’t  _say_  anything

 _Ten to places!_  booms from the hall and Marisol murmurs with her eyes still on hers,  _Thank you, ten…_ and then she looks down at herself suddenly, down at the dress and her still moving hands and she shakes her head, says,  _You did this all after rehearsal last night?_

Irma shrugs which isn’t an answer when someone’s not looking at you and so Marisol does again and her eyes are bright like bright stars and Irma wants to say, _No big, got bored, I’m a machine, remember?_  and then laugh carelessly and say  _Kick some ass, Cordero_  and then run away, run to her seat and hide in the dark for the next 2 and a half hours, but she says instead before she can stop herself,  _You should have flowers on opening_

and Marisol’s face goes unbearably soft and after another moment of just  _looking_ she suddenly reaches out and hugs her and Irma tries not seem like someone who doesn’t know what to do with being hugged but she doesn’t, she just tries not to like it so much because that’s probably weird, and after too long a time of just standing there she finally remembers to raise her arms and hug back until Marisol releases her, mumbling _thank you_  into her shoulder as she pulls away

Irma mumbles back,  _N_ _o big deal_ letting her arms drop awkwardly to her sides

and Marisol says,  _I_ _t is to me_  and she bites her lip, looking more nervous and unsure than Irma has ever seen her in the month since they’ve met and she wants to hug her again but she  _can’t_ , so she smiles,  _Break a leg, Marisol_ , and turns to go because,  _Five to places_

_Floréal_

_Huh?_

_Call me Floréal? My friends… in New York used to call me… my friends call me Floréal, or Flor… whichever…_

Irma blinks at her and then grins, forgetting about her teeth that she hates and tries never to show anyone ever, and says,  _Ok. Floréal. Break a leg._

And she nods, wide eyed, and gives Irma a goofy grin right back and Irma doesn’t remember leaving the dressing room, going up the stairs, heading down the hallway, finding her seat in the auditorium but suddenly there’s the buzz of excited people around her and she feels it under her skin and she’s still grinning as the lights dim and the band starts to play


	3. Nara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After graduating high school, Irma and Floréal were both accepted into a university in NYC, but Irma had to defer a semester to take care of her dad who had suffered a heart attack, leaving Floréal to reconnect with her pre-Boca best friends, Feuilly and Grantaire. Irma and Grantaire eventually end up being across-the-hall neighbors in Chinatown not long after Floréal starts dating The Banker. The photographs Kath takes are something like [these](http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/lea-seydoux-adele-exarchopoulos#slideshow_58105.1).

\- - -

_winter 2010 - spring 2013, nyc, college_

\- - -

the touching starts when she comes to nyc

flor’s fingers suddenly sliding into her hair out of nowhere

(and she’d fight the urge to close her eyes and purr, lean into her hand and arch like a cat at the lightest of scratches every time

the quickest way to play her like a piano

make her pliant

willing to

you know

whatever you want

whatever whatever whatever

you want)

\- - -

there’s a lingering hug after months of  _miss you_  calls,  _wish you were here_  texts and  _get your ass to nyc_  emails at a party she crashed because she couldn’t wait until the morning to see her after 15 hours on the road

she feels like death warmed over but it’s worth it, it’s worth it because

she’s clasped tight to her, flor’s hand slip slip slipping up her back to her neck, cradling the curve of her skull and she smells like weed and beer and sweat and she breathes her in and then leans back not wanting to lean back to shout  _hi_  over the thump thump thumping of her bass-echoing heart and _get down girl go head get down_

and flor grins with glowing teeth in the purple-pink now black now white-blue dark and swoops back in on beat, lips to her ear,  _how was the drive, was it a bitch?_

and all she can think is  _put your hand back_

a bump of her hip to her hip, a half dance move, flor nods at a boy with floppy hair and a wide shy smile who ambles over with a friendly wave

 _this is ________ , she says

and _______ shouts  _hi_ over the music as sunglasses at night sidles up, a joint bobbing in a mouth that says  _yo_ and then,  _now I ain’t saying you’re a gold digger, you got needs, you don’t want your dude to smoke but he can’t buy weed-_

flor plucks it from his lips,  _and **this** is _________, takes a hit and passes it to her

she  _yo_ ’s back at him, pretending she actually heard/cares about either of their names and sunglasses at night nods aggressively - _get down girl, go head get down_ \- nearly burning his fingers as he takes the joint back from her and proceeds to smoke it down to nothing in one long pull

and then there’s dancing and drinking and more smoking and more grinning grins and _______ and _________ cease to exist entirely after about 10 minutes because _I can’t believe you’re heeeeeere_

_I can’t believe I’m here_

_**now put your hand back** _

\- - -

later at a diner, intros without the houseparty backbeat, the strobelight, she still doesn’t care what their names are because she’s in nyc with flor like they’d planned, like they’d talked about endlessly for the past  _three_ years and she’s  _here_ she’s finally  _here_ and

stoner boy with big dark eyes, sunglasses shoved up into his greasy hair, stealing her fries

chewing open-mouthed,  _is your hair_  (chew)  _natural?_  (chew)

and flor’s hand landing, sliding from her shoulder up her neck into it, fingers carding through to tug on the faded blue ends

she looks stoner boy dead in the eye, _you’ll never find out_ , and flor’s chin on her shoulder, her breath a warm huffed laugh against her skin and she shivers like it’s the air conditioner’s arctic blast that makes her

and stoner boy asks her for a cigarette, a stolen fry hanging out of his mouth like one and the boy scout smiles apologetically as though anything ever bothers her ever _who do you even think I am boy scout_  and flor’s hand goes away to mess with boy scout’s collar and she can feel her lips twist, scowl  _who even is this kid anyway_

and she throws a cigarette at stoner boy, pulls her plate closer, finishes her food before he can do it for her but smirks a little despite herself when he manages to nab one more fry and pop it into his mouth blinking wide eyed at her like  _what???_

by the end of the night she’s already forgotten their names because who even gives a fuck as flor taps morse code that she doesn’t know how to read onto her knee cap

\- - -

nyc is boca without the bullshit of boca

they dance and they drink and they smoke

and sometimes flor’s friends are there -  _feuilly_ ,  _grantaire_ \- but mostly it’s just the two of them and she gets braver, she pinches flor’s elbow, her hip, her thigh, and flor twirls her hair when they sit near enough to touch, pulling a little sometimes to  _accent!uate! a point!_

(and she still wants to purr like a cat

like a tiger

every

goddamn

time)

and the drama department thinks they’re fucking and they laugh because it’s just like boca except she doesn’t give a shit about playing for boys and flor leaves a party with one after they slap each other’s asses farewell and she makes out with girls, she fucks them into their own mattresses and the only thing she asks for for herself is hands in her hair

and one time one of them gasps  _I need to take your picture again_  and she laughs up at her from between her thighs and the girl, kath, who’s shampoo smells like oranges and makes her think of the not-shitty parts of florida says  _c’mon it’s for my thesis_ and she doesn’t ask what it is but says  _ok_  and kath moans and curls her hands in her hair that’s long now and not blue at all,  _that girl too, your girl, I want both of you_

\- - -

the shutter _click click clicks_ , and flor’s hands in her hair, both of them in her hair, her lips thisclose and her own hands where they’ve never gone and it’s art, it’s beautiful, it’s tilting her head back with flor on her lap and lipstick smeared gently onto her lips, arms around each other but looking at the camera except for when they’re  _not_ , and flor’s fingers  _tangling_  in her hair,  _twisting_  in her hair, hers pressing into her hips hard enough to leave an echo of the lace there on her skin after it’s peeled away, flor’s breath in her mouth like a cinnamon cloud and they’re not laughing anymore, they’re not smiling anymore during the set ups, and her heart is a hammer, cracking her ribs to splinters, kath murmuring _yes, **click** , that,  **click**_  as flor suddenly tugs her head back by her hair and she breaths out shaky and hot and flor’s lips part and she wants to fit hers against them and there’s cinnamon in her mouth, there’s cinnamon

and then  _ **click**  awesome! got it! thanks!_

and then there’s quickly getting dressed

and flor laughing too loudly like

_that was fun_

_we are soooo hot boissy_

laughing

ha

ha

ha

and then _god so busy!_

and o _h! I can’t this afternoon!_

and  _shit, I forgot I made plans with _____!_

and she counters with  _my job is kicking my ass_

_I’m behind with my class work anyway so_

it’s cool

it’s fine

some other time

and  _yeah me too, I’m behind too, I’m-_

 _**always with my bougie boyfriend and his ethan allen furniture and martha stewart walls and business class air miles that take me to paris on the spur of the moment for a few weeks because that’s** _ _**just** _ _**what** _ _**he** _ _**does** _

\- - -

she starts to hang with stoner boy

who’s actually junkie boy

but he follows her rules and they have a good time and she fights the urge to stress vomit whenever she runs into him in the hallway and he’s glazed over and dulled and she can’t look at his bare arms or she actually will because  _tony_  and

nope

_nope_

_**nope** _

but it’s nice not to drink alone sometimes

and he hates _ethan allen_  as much as she does

if not more

\- - -

when kath shows her the prints

she sees herself

she sees it

and she can’t pretend like it’s not there because it is

in literal black and white

and she thinks, _I have to tell her, I have to ask her_

because she sees flor too and

flor looks

flor looks like

and she takes the copies kath gives her

and she takes out her phone as she leaves kath’s studio

and she thinks  _fuck ethan allen, fuck paris_

she needs to see her, needs to show her, needs to ask, needs to  _know_  and like magic, an _i need to see yo_ u text appears just as she’s about totype _i need to see you_ :

**meet me at balthazar i have something to tell you**

and she brings the prints with her, she runs through a rain storm slipping in her shoes and she doesn’t have an umbrella so she sticks them into her jacket safe against her chest and she comes in drip drip dripping and flor in a cardigan and pearls and a ring on her finger and glowing white teeth and his hand in her hair, smoothing a loose piece into a  _bun_  for fuckssake and  _don’t you know who she is_  flor is not  _buns_  and  _cardigans_  and  _pearls_

and she thinks  _no_ , when they tell her, when they actually  _say_  it

she thinks

_no_

_no_

_wait_

_I love you_

_please_

_no_

_no_

and she never even unzips her jacket, she lets the photos bend and curl and her hair is rain-tangled and not for touching and she congratulates, she smiles wide because she doesn’t give a fuck about her ugly teeth anymore, she doesn’t give a fuck about her ugly, but she hides it from flor because flor is  _happy_  and she deserves  _happy_

she shakes the hand he offers as a joke,  _what do you say, do I have your blessing_ , and she wants to dig her nails in

(hiss like a cat

growl like a tiger)

she smiles and shows him her ugly, a toothy fuck off with her mascara smeared with rain and her hair tangled and not for touching anymore

laughs

ha

ha

ha

and she stuffs the photos into a trash bin on the way home like she’s destroying evidence and she is, she absolutely is

and she goes to a bar

and she finds a girl

growls

purrs

_you can touch_

_anything you want_

_except my hair_


End file.
